Married couples and single people are likely to prefer others in the same relationship status, new research reveals.

People like to believe that their way of life — whether single or coupled — is the best for everyone, especially if they think their relationship status is unlikely to change, a study shows.

Furthermore, it suggests that this bias may influence how we treat others - even in situations where relationship status shouldn't matter.

Prejudice: New research reveals that married couples prefer others who have the same relationship status - and singles likewise tend to be biased towards other singletons

U.S. researchers found that people were more likely to view both applicants for jobs and candidates for political office more favourably if they had the same relationship status.

Previous research has shown that feeling 'stuck' within a particular social system leads people to justify and rationalise that system.

Kristin Laurin of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and David Kille and Richard Eibach of the University of Waterloo wondered whether this might also apply to a person's relationship status.

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'We often become evangelists for our own lifestyles,' they observe in the study published in the academic journal Psychological Science.

'When it comes to our relationship status, we are rarely content to simply say "being single works for me" or "being in a relationship suits my disposition".'

Professor Laurin and her colleagues hypothesised that this would happen most often when people think their relationship status won't change.

And this is exactly what they found. Their first study revealed that the more stable participants considered their relationship status to be, the more they idealised that status as a norm for others to follow.

This applied to both single and coupled participants, regardless of how personally happy they were with their status.

Nick and Nicole: Participants who judged their own relationship status to be stable imagined that Nicole/Nick would have a happier and more fulfilling Valentine's Day if s/he had the same status as them

HOW BRAIN SCANS CAN REVEAL WHICH COUPLES WILL LAST

Brain scans could reveal whether new couples have found long-lasting love, researchers have revealed.

Scientists noticed patterns in the brain activity of volunteers who had recently fallen in love and found they could predict whether the couples would be together three years later.

The findings showed even if volunteers believed they were in passionately love when their brains were scanned, by examining their neuron activity scientists could detect whether those feelings were strong enough for the relationship to last.

Volunteers were shown photographs of their partner and were asked to think of memories of them while their brains were scanned.

Where volunteers' brains showed more activity in the caudate tail area - which reacts emotionally to visual beauty - but less in the medial orbitofrontal cortex - the area linked to criticism and judgement - their relationships tended to last.

The brain scan on the left of the above image shows a volunteer whose relationship lasted. The right image shows the brain of a volunteer who later split from their partner. Red shows heightened activity and blue shows the brain is deactivated

Surprisingly the pleasure centres of the brain were less active in the brains of couples who stayed together.

The scientists say reduced activation in this area, which relates to addiction and seeking rewards, has been linked to satiety and satisfaction.

For their second study, the
researchers decided to take advantage of Valentine's Day, an annual
event that seems to put everyone's relationship status front and centre.

They
recruited participants on Valentine's Day and asked them to imagine a
Valentine's Day evening for a hypothetical person of the same gender,
Nicole or Nick.

Participants
who judged their own relationship status to be stable imagined that
Nicole/Nick would have a happier and more fulfilling Valentine's Day if
s/he had the same status as them; they gave less positive judgments when
Nicole/Nick's relationship status was different from theirs.

To
investigate whether this bias might influence how we actually behave
toward others, Professor Laurin and colleagues conducted two more
studies, this time experimentally manipulating perceived stability.

Participants who were led to perceive greater stability in their relationship status judged same-status job candidates more positively, although they weren't more likely to hire them.

They were more likely to vote for a same-status political candidate, however, when they had information that gave them an excuse to express their bias.

When the data from all four studies were combined into one analysis, the results showed that perceived stability led both coupled and single participants to treat others like them more favourably.

The fact that this relationship bias can influence our behaviour towards others is significant.

'People may be aware of their own tendency to idealise being single or coupled, but they may not realise that this can impact how they respond to others — and how others respond to them,' the researchers said.

Given well-documented cultural prejudice against singles, Professor Laurin and her colleagues expected that coupled people would have no trouble rationalising their status, but they were more surprised to see that this effect was just as strong for single people.

According to the researchers, this study is 'the first to show relationship-specific patterns of prejudice whereby both single and coupled people favour others who share their relationship status over those who don't.'

As a next step, the researchers plan to explore whether people idealise other aspects of their lives, such as the decisions they've made, the type of community they live in, or the career path they've chosen.